“The army intelligence directorate beneath my command didn’t reside as much as our mission,” Haliva stated in a letter shared by the IDF. The doc was titled “Duty and Termination of Place.”
Referring to the Hamas assault, Haliva wrote that he has “been carrying that black day ever since, day and evening. I’ll reside with the horrible ache of the struggle daily.”
For greater than a yr, Hamas strategically deliberate its assault on Israel, following battle plans constructed on open-source supplies, Israeli intelligence officers stated in December.
The assault shocked Israelis and instantly raised questions in regards to the nation’s intelligence and protection capabilities. The Washington Submit reported final yr that regardless of data coming to gentle in August that an assault was imminent, warnings had been dismissed, and the communities on the Israeli facet of the border had been by no means notified a couple of menace.
Haliva, who has served within the army for 38 years, will formally go away the position as soon as his successor is appointed, the IDF stated.
Monday’s request for forgiveness is just not new for Haliva, who, simply 10 days after the Hamas assault, took duty for the intelligence failures that led to the assault.
“In all my visits to Army Intelligence Directorate models within the final 11 days, I sat down and careworn that the start of the struggle was an intelligence failure,” Haliva stated in October, including that the army intelligence directorate, beneath his command, “did not warn of the terrorist assault.”
Within the months because the struggle, anger has flared at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has shied away from accepting any duty for the intelligence failures that led to the unprecedented cross-border assault by Hamas.
Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving chief, has largely refused to deal with a key query: What duty does he bear for the safety lapses that allowed the militants to storm Israeli communities in October, destroying houses and killing civilians.
Lior Soroka contributed to this report.